Interesting! Thanks for your responses. Two votes for Jacob, but Cloud Atlas gets a higher rating on Amazon. I don't really read any "experimental novels" (that I know of, anyway) but the idea intrigues me. I will probably start with Jacob if it's easier to get into, though.

I thought that Thousand Autumns, like all the Mitchell books I've read, was great, but it's a little slow getting started. With Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten you've got to accept a certain amount of confusion until you figure out the structure. There's a big pay-off in all his books, and a little bit of what seems at first to be wandering around.

Am reading Cloud Atlas right now. I'm on the second story right now--the composer in Belgium--and while it's slow-moving, I am amazed by David Mitchell's writing ability. There are some young writers who get a lot of attention for, IMHO, gimmicks that mask what otherwise might be a mediocre talent (I immediately think of Markus Zusak and his Holocaust-pornish The Book Thief), but Mitchell is the real deal. I'm very, very, very impressed, and will definitely finish the book despite its slow pace.

Am reading Cloud Atlas right now. I'm on the second story right now--the composer in Belgium--and while it's slow-moving, I am amazed by David Mitchell's writing ability. There are some young writers who get a lot of attention for, IMHO, gimmicks that mask what otherwise might be a mediocre talent (I immediately think of Markus Zusak and his Holocaust-pornish The Book Thief), but Mitchell is the real deal. I'm very, very, very impressed, and will definitely finish the book despite its slow pace.

It picks up rather quickly after that section ends. If you're impressed now...

I'm finally finished with Cloud Atlas and for what it's worth, here's my review. Don't read it if you think the novel is the greatest thing since sliced bread:

Can a novel be silly and unoriginal AND awesome at the same time? Yes, and that novel is David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. I've never read a writer with so much talent tell such mediocre stories. And David Mitchell is writer with mega-talent. His prose and dialogue are both stellar, and his character development is rich. But what about the novel?

First of all, as everyone knows, it's not a novel but actually 6 stories, spanning from 1850 to centuries (millennia?) into the future. This very large time span, along with Mitchell's writing, makes the novel awesome. But like the novel Dune, the future as envisioned by Mitchell is silly. No, I do not believe an interstellar civilization would return to feudalism as its governing system (as in Dune), and no, I don't believe a culture capable of cloning humans would be so callous to its clones (the Korean era in Cloud Atlas) nor do I believe, no matter what tragedy, people would return to a Stone Age technology (the post-apocalyptic Hawaiian part). This is lazy thinking, just winging it.

Worse, unlike Dune, half of the stories (maybe even more than the half) are ripoffs of other stories, particularly famous movies. The Korean episode is, what else, Blade Runner with an all-Asian cast; the Hawaii episode is Mad Max or, if you want to go there, L. Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth; and the Lousia Rey story just Silkwood without Meryl Streep (right down to the baddies running her car off the road).

Finally, what the hell is this novel about?! Now, if it's just a brain-dead action novel like James Patterson's books, that's one thing. But clearly, Mitchell is trying to say SOMETHING BIG. What that is, I have no clue. If it's what the movie trailer is saying--"Everything's connected!"--then okay, so what? And how does Mitchell show this connection? By having all the main characters have the same "comet"-like birthmark and each era's principal characters reading a book or watching a movie/hologram from the previous era? Okay, that's nice. But this is just gimmick with no payoff.

Finally, what the hell is this novel about?! Now, if it's just a brain-dead action novel like James Patterson's books, that's one thing. But clearly, Mitchell is trying to say SOMETHING BIG. What that is, I have no clue. If it's what the movie trailer is saying--"Everything's connected!"--then okay, so what? And how does Mitchell show this connection? By having all the main characters have the same "comet"-like birthmark and each era's principal characters reading a book or watching a movie/hologram from the previous era? Okay, that's nice. But this is just gimmick with no payoff.

I thought the last few pages summed up the point of the book pretty nicely.

Am reading Cloud Atlas right now. I'm on the second story right now--the composer in Belgium--and while it's slow-moving, I am amazed by David Mitchell's writing ability. There are some young writers who get a lot of attention for, IMHO, gimmicks that mask what otherwise might be a mediocre talent (I immediately think of Markus Zusak and his Holocaust-pornish The Book Thief), but Mitchell is the real deal. I'm very, very, very impressed, and will definitely finish the book despite its slow pace.

haha, you are spot on re: The Book Thief. Sooo overrated. Zusak was clearly striving mightily for some sort of awe-inspiring, transcendent emotional response, but it just didn't work for me.

back to David Mitchell...he is very good. For those who have trepidation about reading "experimental" fiction - I don't read that stuff either, my tastes are solidly middlebrow - and I like Mitchell. I started out with the awesome Black Swan Green, which has a relatively straightforward structure. I then went on to Ghostwritten, which was beautifully written, but for me the ending didn't quite come together. I then read the utterly fascinating No. 9 Dream. Still have Cloud Atlas and "Jacob" to go, looking forward to it.